There's no chaos quite like filming live television, and there's perhaps no yearly event more chaotic than New Year's Eve. Mix the two together and you get weirdness every single year. This time around was no exception, as Chrissy Teigen found out when she was hit all up in the face with Saturday Night Live star Leslie Jones' umbrella. Watch the all-time classic TV moment below...
You can take all the well-constructed stand-up routines and Coen Brothers jokes and Dorothy Parker retorts and none of them will ever be as funny as watching someone fall down and/ or get hit in the face in an unexpected moment. There is something deep inside all of us that yearns to watch others experience brief moderate pain. We don't want people to be seriously hurt, of course. Most of us aren't monsters. We do, however, want to see them trip or slip on ice or miss a chair while they're trying to sit down. Absent long-term consequences, it's all really funny, especially getting hit in the face with an umbrella.
In a weird way, this hilarious television mess-up is actually a good reminder of why Chrissy Teigen is a good fit for live events. You have to have the ability to laugh at yourself and just move on. There are plenty of seasoned broadcasters who need the ability to try it again, to work through different takes and to control as much of their environment as possible. New Year's Eve in Times Square, however, is not a controllable environment. It's millions of people herded together like cattle, peeing in adult diapers and screaming their heads off for bands that probably won't be famous in a year. You can't control any of it, and it's a fool's errand to even try. You just have to stand there and let yourself get hit in the face with umbrellas.
Thankfully, in case it wasn't clear from her reaction, Chrissy Teigen was fine. She later took to Twitter to even joke about the incident, as she's so accustomed to doing...
If you can't get enough of the live television weirdness from last night, I'd encourage you to check around for some other bits of shock value. We had Anderson Cooper trying to take a shot and handling it ummm poorly. We had Jane Curtin dropping some highly aggressive and unexpected political statements, and we had drenched honeymooners calling the rainstorm "wonderful". Stay weird, New Years. Stay weird.
